The Social Government Organization.
The Internet has evolved into a "Web 2.0" version, where there is an interaction between users. The networking site, Facebook, which is one example of social media, has only been online for a few years and already has over 500 million users around the world. Social media is an easy way to create contact and accessibility with their audiences and can become a tool for private individuals, companies and organizations to reach their target audiences. The governmental organizations can also use social media to communicate with their customers, stakeholders and the public. But the governmental organizations have many directives and management requirements to consider.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of social media in greater governmental organizations with a focus on resource usage and benefit for the user. The essay also investigates how the social media usage are affected by the governmental organizations being driven by the state and having a requirement of being public.
Four major Swedish governmental organizations, with different approaches and processes for social media were interviewed to investigate the purpose of the essay. A content analysis of the participating organizations’ Facebook-pages has also been carried out. This resulted in a relatively coherent vision of social media. All businesses consider it important to be active in social media, but are concerned about how to handle privacy and personal data. It also appeared that the organizations do not believe that it is possible to use social media to streamline communication externally.
The conclusion is that the activities are more accessible to the public through social media and can create space for engagement and discussion. However, social media cannot be used as the sole tool to streamline communication externally between governmental organizations and the public and companies.